As Whitman said so eloquently, "I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return." Thoughts, that is, about being a librarian.

August 20, 2009

Getting It System Toolkit (GIST) released yesterday

Yesterday, the GIST team released the Getting It System Toolkit to the public and now we are awaiting feedback and input from other libraries. Today, the Acquisitions clerk and I sat down at my library and went through the workflow for the acquisitions processing and worked out the bugs in our request process. Its going to take a little while to get used to, neither of us has used ILLiad before, but it really streamlines the request workflow, which was a holy mess before. We were getting requests from a number of different interfaces (emails through my work account, the library's php request form, the website suggestion box, emails routed from the director's office, etc.) and no real easy way of managing the overload of paper this created. Print out the request (email, flyer, brochure, website, etc.) put it in a folder, check library holdings, find a vendor, download an OCLC record, create an order record in the ILS, and on and on. The GIST interface and the backend ILLiad request form takes all this disparate information (request, holdings, price, user feedback) and puts it into one place. It is pure heaven...it also automates the communication portion of the request, by setting up customized emails and with one click I can send a faculty member an email to let them know I have ordered their book. I love it! I am really looking forward to when faculty and students get back and start using this request system in earnest.

Here's the text of the release announcement:

Milne Library at SUNY Geneseo is releasing the
first version
of theGetting It System
Toolkit (GIST) on
Wednesday, August 19th. GIST was developed at the State University of
New
York College at Geneseo with an eye toward converging ILL and
Acquisitions
workflows and user interfaces, while leveraging the strengths of
various
workflows and systems. Beware: GIST was designed to transform the
business of
borrowing, buying, and accessing.

The purpose of GIST is to provide a new model and useful tools to
integrate and
optimize acquisitions and interlibrary loan services, and to promote
regional
collection diversity. It is a system for merging Acquisitions and ILL
request workflow using one interface, allowing for user-initiated
requests,
coordinated collection development and acquisitions. The project
integrates disparate content and workflow (holdings, price, user
feedback) that
is hard to merge in many ILS.

So how does it work?

GIST uses customized ILLiad 8 workflows, client
layouts, and
web pages that display discovery information from Amazon Web Services
(price,
reviews, & ratings), the WorldCat API (holdings information),
Google Books
API (table of contents or full/partial text), and open access content,
and
prompts for user input and feedback. Why? Currently, most
acquisition and ILL requests are done through function-based
departments, with
their own workflow and multiple methods of input from librarians,
faculty,
students and other users. GIST allows a library to customize and
configure the request management process through:

* Automated holdings information check using the WorldCat
API service (local, regional, state, etc.)
* Purchase price look-up service using Amazon and other
vendor APIs
* Collection of user feedback (should library purchase this
item? Is it essential, non-essential, etc.?)
* Customizable emails and workflow enhancement by using the
ILLiad software on the staff side